A client portal for accountants who are tired of asking twice
You already know which nine clients still owe you documents. FirmHello turns that knowledge into a checklist your client can see, and then does the following up for you.
Free for 14 days, no credit card. Your portal carries your firm's name from the first client you add.
2024 individual tax return
9 of 14 received1 item overdue — FirmHello is chasing
- income statement — Meridian Health Received 2 Mar
- interest summary — Fairview Credit Union Received 2 Mar
- Mortgage interest statement Received 6 Mar
- ! Rental income ledger — Ash Street Overdue
- Childcare provider details Reminder tomorrow
- Engagement letter Approved 28 Feb
Harbour & Co's portal, as their client sees it.
Most accounting work does not stall because the work is hard. It stalls because a rental statement is sitting in someone's downloads folder and you have asked for it three times. The asking is the job nobody accounted for.
FirmHello gives each of your clients a private portal on your own domain. You tell it what you need for a individual return, a set of year end financials or a ATO filing. They see a numbered list of outstanding items, upload straight into it, and get a nudge from your firm every few days until the list is empty.
The part of the job that never appears on a timesheet
The same six documents, every single year
Every client needs a slightly different set of papers, and only you know which. That list lives in your head or in last year's email thread, so it gets rebuilt from scratch every October.
Attachments as a filing system
A client sends four photos of a receipt, one of them sideways, in three separate replies. Six weeks later you need the second one and the only place it exists is a mail client.
Chasing is unbillable and unpleasant
Nobody trained to be an accountant so they could write a fourth polite reminder. It takes real hours, it sours the relationship, and you cannot charge for it.
You find out you are blocked far too late
A return sits at ninety percent complete for a month because one number is missing, and nothing in your system is shouting about it.
How a return moves through FirmHello
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Step 1
Build the list once, reuse it every year
Save a request template for a individual return, a partnership, a company tax return. Applying it to a client pre-fills every item, including the ones they always forget.
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Step 2
Your client works through a checklist
They open your portal, see what is outstanding and what has already landed, and upload from their phone or desktop. No account to create, no password to invent, no file size lecture.
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Step 3
FirmHello chases until the list is empty
Reminders go out from your firm on the rhythm you choose. You watch a progress bar instead of writing emails, and pick the work up the moment it turns green.
What accountants use most
Every featureRequest lists
Templates for a individual return, a partnership, a company tax return. Apply one to a client and every item they always forget is already on the list.
Automatic chasing
Set a reminder rhythm for January and a gentler one for the rest of the year. Outstanding items chase themselves; you stop being the nag.
Client vault
Prior-year returns, engagement letters, ID documents and permanent records, searchable by client and by year instead of by email subject.
Approvals on the record
The engagement letter is item one on the checklist, approved in the portal and filed automatically the moment it is done.
Your brand, your domain
Clients log in at your own domain and every reminder comes from your practice. To them it is your system, because it is.
Audit trail
A dated record of who uploaded what and when, which matters the day a client insists they sent you something in February.
What accountants ask for first
tax time, without the inbox
Filter to every client with an incomplete list, sorted by what is most overdue. That view is the whole of tax time, in one screen.
Fixed-fee work stops leaking
When collection is automatic, the unbillable hours you were absorbing on a fixed fee go back into the work you are actually paid for.
One list per engagement, not per client
A client with a personal return, a rental and a company gets three separate lists, so nothing gets muddled between engagements.
Client documents are the most sensitive thing a firm holds
So the portal is built to hold them properly: encrypted, access granted one client at a time, and every action recorded. Nothing travels as an email attachment.
How FirmHello is built- Encrypted in transit and at rest
- TLS 1.3 on every connection and AES-256 encryption for stored documents, with keys managed separately from the data they protect.
- Access is per client, not per firm
- A client can only ever load their own space. Staff access is granted per client, so a junior can be given three files and nothing else.
- No documents in email
- Notifications tell a client that something is waiting and link them to the portal. The material itself never leaves it as an attachment.
- Complete audit trail
- Views, uploads, downloads, approvals and permission changes are all recorded with actor, time and IP, and the log is exportable.
- Retention you control
- Set how long documents live per client or per matter, and hold or purge on request, so the portal matches the retention policy you already have.
- Hosted in your region
- Choose United States, Canada, the EU or the United Kingdom, and your firm's data stays in that region.
Questions from accountants
Do my clients have to create an account?
No. A client opens the link you send and lands in their own space. You can add a password or a one-time code for clients who want one, but nobody is forced through a signup form before they can send you a income statement.
Can I reuse the same document list for every tax return?
Yes — that is what request templates are for. Build a list for a personal return once, then apply it to a hundred clients. You can add or remove items per client afterwards without touching the template.
Is this secure enough for tax documents?
Documents are encrypted in transit and at rest, each client can only reach their own space, and nothing travels as an email attachment. Every view and download is logged and exportable. Our security page sets out the architecture.
What happens to documents when the engagement ends?
You set a retention period per client or per engagement and FirmHello holds or purges to match it. You can also export a client's complete vault as a single archive at any point.
Does it work for bookkeeping clients as well as tax?
Yes. Monthly bookkeeping tends to use a recurring list — bank statements, card statements, receipts — that reopens on a schedule rather than a one-off list per year.
Can my staff see only the clients they work on?
Staff access is granted per client, so a seasonal preparer can be given the twelve returns they are working on and nothing else.
Related
Where to go next
Every page on the site, grouped by the question it answers.
Ready when you are
Get your practice set up before the next 31 October.
No card and no sales call. If you would rather tell us about your firm first, use the longer form.